‘Open Ended’ Laboratory to Study the Influence of Unit’s Weight on Axle Torque in Railway Traction

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to propose a scenario and a test bench to study, in a trans-disciplinary way, how the operation of a traction unit with asynchronous motor is influenced by the railway channel. The main issue of the experiment is to find how the weight of the motor unit can influence the axle torque. The topics involved are: 1. ‘How to calculate the train resistance to forward movement’ (expected results: calculation and plot in Matlab) and 2. ‘How to calculate the force needed to move the train and the traction characteristic at the startup of the train’ (expected results: data acquisition and plotting in LabView). The design of the scenario follows the guideline of an ‘Open Ended’ laboratory. The advantages of this approach are: the study can have an inter- and trans- disciplinary approach, the lab could be developed in a hybrid way: in presence in lab, individual for the-oretical research and in team to solve and disseminate the results. Regarding IT communication, the research needs to use different software packages as Matlab, LabView. images